Kilrush Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | Kilrush Marina, Kilrush, County Clare, Ireland |
| Telephone | 065 9052624 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Kilrush Lifeboat Station serves the lower Shannon estuary from the County Clare town of Kilrush, near the mouth of Ireland’s longest river. Established in 1995 as part of the RNLI’s expansion of cover on the west coast, it watches over a broad estuary famous for its resident bottlenose dolphins and busy with fishing and leisure craft. The station operates an Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat.
As the RNLI improved its cover along the west coast of Ireland in the 1990s, a lifeboat station was established at Kilrush in 1995 to protect the lower Shannon estuary, a wide expanse of water between Counties Clare and Kerry. A new boathouse and slipway were completed at the marina in 1995, and the station’s inshore lifeboat began providing cover for the estuary’s fishing boats, leisure craft and the many visitors drawn to its dolphin-watching and watersports.
The station has operated successive Atlantic-class inshore lifeboats, and now runs the Atlantic 85 Edith Louise Eastwick (B-844), launched by carriage. From its base near Scattery Island, with its round tower and early monastic remains, the Kilrush crew cover a large area of sheltered but strongly tidal water at the heart of the Shannon estuary, an internationally important habitat and home to one of only a handful of resident bottlenose dolphin groups in Europe, working closely with the Fenit lifeboat across the wide mouth of the estuary.
